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Posts Tagged ‘removes’

Apple removes claim that its Pro Display XDR goes ‘far beyond HDR’ in the UK

12 Apr

Following a complaint and subsequent review by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in the UK, Apple has changed the marketing for its $ 5,000 Pro Display XDR. Per 9to5Mac, the ASA asked Apple to remove the term ‘Far beyond HDR’ from its marketing materials for its flagship display, a request which Apple abided, at least in the UK. In the US, the phrase ‘Far beyond HDR’ remains live.

The phrase ‘Far beyond HDR’ has become a sticking point because some customers believe it’s misleading. The Pro Display XDR displays 99% of the P3 wide color gamut, and complaints have alleged that the term ‘Far beyond HDR’ suggests that the display shows 100% of the P3 color gamut.

On Apple’s US store, the term ‘Far beyond HDR’ remains present.

In response to the complaints, Apple has taken two steps. It has removed ‘Far beyond HDR’ from its UK website, as mentioned. Still, Apple has also added a footnote following the sentence, ‘A P3 wide color gamut provides a color palette capable of creating the most vibrant imagery.’ This footnote corresponds to small text at the bottom of the product page, which states, ‘Pro Display XDR supports 99% of the P3 wide color gamut.’ No such footnote currently exists on the product page in the US.

On the other hand, in the UK, the term ‘Far beyond HDR’ has been removed.

The ASA has also taken issue with Apple’s claim that its XDR display has a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio. As of now, that claim remains on Apple’s website. 9 to 5 Mac reports that Apple is having independent tests completed, which Apple hopes will corroborate its contrast ratio claim.

As you can see in this screenshot from Apple’s US store, there’s no footnote about color space performance on the Pro Display XDR’s product page.

On the ASA’s website, the complaint against Apple is listed as informally resolved. Since the complaints were in the UK, they have no impact on Apple’s obligations in other markets.

When Apple first announced the Pro Display XDR in 2019, the California-based company made many lofty claims. Some of them can be verified, such as claims about color space and contrast ratio, while others are more difficult to confirm.

In the UK, however, the text in the ‘Show your truest colors’ section now includes a footnote that corresponds to the text, ‘Pro Display XDR supports 99% of the P3 wide color gamut.’ Click to enlarge.

For example, Apple says the Pro Display XDR is the ‘world’s best pro display.’ What does that even mean? It likely means something different to different users. For what it’s worth, reviews for the display have been generally very positive, with many claiming that the display features incredible build quality and fantastic performance.

Apple’s popularity and position mean that the company attracts a lot of attention, not all of it positive. The company is no stranger to complaints, investigations and general government oversight across the many markets it operates. It’s merely part of doing business, big business in Apple’s case. Does Apple’s Pro Display XDR go ‘far beyond HDR?’ Well, I guess that depends on who, or rather, where you ask.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Canon removes dozens of authorized dealers in the United States

21 Feb

Canon USA has updated its authorized dealers list, removing dozens of dealers from its network. According to Canon Price Watch, this change took place on February 13 and initially involved 86 authorized dealers; however, Canon reached out on February 18 to clarify that certain dealers had been removed due to ‘administrative errors’ and that they had since been added back on to the list.

Sources speaking to the website claim the changes were made as a way to cut Canon USA’s operating costs. Online-only dealers and small stores were primarily affected by this change. Canon says that it added back in some dealers, including military exchanges, which were initially removed by mistake.

As of February 18, a total of 71 authorized dealers had been removed by Canon, including destinations like 33 Street Camera, Maui Digital Imaging, Rochester Institute of Technology, Santa Monica Camera, Camera Center of New York, B&C Photo and more. New York and California experienced the largest number of removals.

Canon USA maintains a list of its authorized dealers on its website.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Instagram removes ad partner accused of harvesting huge trove of data on users

13 Aug

More than a year after Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook-owned Instagram has banned one of its vetted advertising partners, HYP3R, after it was allegedly caught scraping a huge amount of data on users. The claim comes from Business Insider, which published a report last week alleging that HYP3R was saving Instagram Stories and harvesting posts from public location pages to track users.

HYP3R is a location-based marketing platform, according to the firm’s website. Business Insider claims it spoke to ‘multiple former’ HYP3R employees on the company’s practices in addition to reviewing public documents and marketing materials. Though the amount of data the company allegedly scraped from Instagram remains unclear, sources told BI that ‘more than 90%’ of the company’s data on ’hundreds of millions of the highest value consumers in the world’ came from the social media platform.

Among other things, the marketing company was accused of building a tool that enabled it to download and save Instagram Stories related to locations of interest.

An Instagram security issue that allowed users to view public location page posts without logging in made HYP3R’s alleged data harvesting possible, the report claims. Among other things, the marketing company was accused of building a tool that enabled it to download and save Instagram Stories related to locations of interest.

As a consequence of this alleged action, BI claims that HYP3R was able to ‘build up detailed profiles of huge numbers of people’s movements, their habits, and the businesses they frequent over time.’

Instagram reportedly sent HYP3R a cease-and-desist letter after learning about the marketing firm’s alleged actions, telling BI in a statement that the ‘actions were not sanctioned and violate our policies.’ In addition to removing the advertiser from its platform, Instagram said, ‘We’ve also made a product change that should help prevent other companies from scraping public location pages in this way.’

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Bye Bye Camera is an iOS app that removes humans from photos

25 Jun

Bye Bye Camera is a new app for iOS that does one thing and one thing only: it detects people in the image, removes them and fills in the background. The function should be welcome by landscape or travel photographers who shoot at popular locations that are busy with tourists but is meant to be an artistic statement rather than a photographic tool.

Artist Damjanski created the app alongside his art collective Do Something Good. Talking to Artnome Damjanski said:

‘I’ve created this project together with two of my longtime collaborators, Andrej and Pavel, from Russia. A couple of years ago I created a collective called Do Something Good where I connected all the people I’ve collaborated with online. By now we’re 16 people around the world from different fields and collaborate on different projects.

The app takes out the vanity of any selfie and also the person. I consider Bye Bye Camera an app for the post-human era. It’s a gentle nod to a future where complex programs replace human labor and some would argue the human race. It’s interesting to ask what is a human from an Ai (yes, the small “i” is intended) perspective? In this case, a collection of pixels that identify a person based on previously labeled data. But who labels this data that defines a person immaterially? So many questions for such an innocent little camera app.’

On a technology level, the app works by using functionality from an image recognition app called Yolo and combines it with a neural network that analyzes the visible elements in the background and fills in the gaps once the person is removed.

This is by no means new technology but on this occasion it is applied with a slightly different purpose in mind: the app wasn’t designed to remove the odd bystander who sneaked into your frame but to wipe all humans from your images and capture post-human scenes. If this sounds like something you’d like to try you can download the app from the App Store now for $ 2.99.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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RED quietly removes mention of Hydrogen One modules from website

13 Mar

Initial reviews of RED’s Hydrogen One smartphone weren’t too favorable but at the time of the device launch one important component of the Hydrogen One eco-system had not been available yet: additional modules that would attach to the back of the device via pogo pins and offer expanded user experiences and features, such as extra battery life, additional storage space, and most importantly, a camera module with lens mount.

However, it now looks like we might have been waiting for the release of those modules in vain as RED has quietly removed all mention of them from its website. This change was spotted on Reddit by user u/ReipasTietokonePoju and kicked off a forum discussion between owners of the device.

Removed section of the RED website

RED eventually issued an official update saying ‘We are currently in the middle of radically changing the Hydrogen program.’ According to company founder Jim Jannard, ‘A series of obstacles and then new discoveries have given us the opportunity to significantly improve the entire program, not only for Hydrogen but also for RED.

Those changes include a change of leadership – the RED team, lead by Jarred Land, will now be fully in charge of the professional image capture program for Hydrogen – but otherwise the company provides very little detail. More information is promised ‘soon,’ however.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Google removes 29 malicious Android camera apps from Play Store

07 Feb

Google has removed 29 malicious camera apps from the Google Play Store according to security company Trend Micro. Researchers identified 29 Android camera apps, many of them ‘beauty apps,’ that compromised user security, including presenting full-screen malicious advertisements when the user’s phone was unlocked and potentially keeping user images on remote servers.

Of the 29 apps, 11 were downloaded more than 100,000 times, and of those instances, three were downloaded more than 1,000,000 times. The three removed apps with the highest download numbers were Pro Camera Beauty, Cartoon Art Photo, and Emoji Camera. Other removed apps include Art Editor, Super Camera, Art Effects for Photo, Art Effect, Prizma Photo Effect, and Pixture.

According to Trend Micro, some of the apps took steps to conceal their malicious nature, as well as hiding its icon so that users would struggle to uninstall it. “A user downloading one of these apps will not immediately suspect that there is anything amiss, until they decide to delete the app,” the company explained in its report.

Though it can be difficult to determine whether an app is malicious, users are advised to review existing user reviews before downloading for any warnings from others about potential security issues.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Sony removes a7/R III firmware version 2.0 from its website, says it’s ‘working on the issue’

09 Dec

Two months after releasing firmware version 2.0 for its a7 III (Windows, MacOS) and a7R III (Windows, MacOS) mirrorless cameras, Sony has removed the firmware update from its website.

At the top of the download pages for Sony’s a7 III and a7R III firmware, an update read:

IMPORTANT: We apologize for the inconvenience, but the release of this software update has been delayed. We are working on the issue and will release the update as soon as possible. (Added on 12-07-2018)

DPReview contacted Sony Friday, December 7th, 2018 asking for more detail on why the update was removed. As of publishing this article on Saturday, December 8th, 2018 DPReview has not received a response. This article will updated accordingly if and when DPReview gets a response from Sony.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Leica M10-P adds a touchscreen and removes the red dot

22 Aug

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Leica has introduced the M10-P, a higher-priced version of the M10 that removes the famous red dot and adds a quieter shutter in order to make the camera ‘the stealthiest M ever’. Though ironically, if stealth is its aim, Leica has also added its trademark script to the top plate, which is hard to miss.

A more significant addition is a touchscreen LCD: the first to grace an M-series camera. This lets you position the area to magnify in live view or double-tap to jump straight to an enlarged view. You can also swipe and pinch-to-zoom in playback mode. There’s also a new spirit level on the LCD and in the viewfinder.

As with the M10, the M10-P has a 24MP CMOS sensor with an ISO range of 100-50,000, a 3″ LCD, Wi-Fi and – of course – the M’s timeless styling. Neither camera has I/O ports: not even USB.

The M10-P comes in black or silver and black and will be available today for $ 7995.

Photos by Mathieu Bitton taken with the M10-P

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Press Release:

The Leica M10-P, A New Level of Understated Excellence

Exceptionally discreet, the new Leica M10-P allows photographers to see and not be seen

August 21, 2018 — Go unnoticed with the Leica M10-P, the newest, most inconspicuous addition to the Leica M series. Exceptionally discreet, the M10-P embodies the essence of the M philosophy and raises the traditional subtlety of the M series to an unprecedented level. The new Leica M10-P separates itself from other digital cameras with its almost inaudible mechanical shutter release and omission of the classic red-dot logo to covertly capture candid moments.

The most notable feature of the Leica M10-P speaks volumes to the core philosophy of the M series, yet it is virtually silent to the ear. At the heart of this camera is its newly designed shutter, making the M10-P the quietest of all digital and analog M cameras ever made. Moments requiring utmost discretion can be captured unobtrusively with the nearly silent, fast and slim M10-P. The design of the Leica M10-P is classically minimalist, featuring only subtle Leica lettering on its top plate, and omitting the Leica red dot logo or any branding on the front.

With the M10-P, Leica debuts a touch-function for the M-System, enabling faster checking of focus in Live-View and Playback modes and convenient contemporary touchscreen controls such as swiping and pinch-to-zoom. The M10-P further assists photographers in capturing a perfectly framed and level shot, thanks to its built-in Level Gauge. This time-saving feature helps photographers get their perfect shot, right at the press of the shutter. All other features, functions, build quality and finishing of the Leica M10-P match the same high standards of its sibling model, the Leica M10. Rounding out that high-level design, the M10-P also comes with a color-matched metal hot shoe cover, giving the top plate a seamless look and sleek style.

Compact, pared down and discrete, the M10-P’s design perfectly reflects the ethos of M cameras: provide photographers the right tools to unobtrusively capture important moments from the rich tapestry of life.

“Never before have I shot with a more discreet camera,” says Grammy Award-nominated photographer Mathieu Bitton. “The M10-P feels like stealth version of my beloved M film cameras. It fully retains that signature M nature, while being so quiet and unobtrusive that my subjects barely realize I’m photographing them. That’s such an important thing in the type of photography I do. The less I distract my subjects, the more genuine moments I’m able to capture.”

The Leica M10-P is available today in Leica Stores, Boutiques and Dealers, offered in a choice of black chrome and silver chrome finishes. This new release from Leica will coexist with the current Leica M10.

Leica M10-P specifications

Price
MSRP $ 7995
Body type
Body type Rangefinder-style mirrorless
Body material Magnesium alloy
Sensor
Max resolution 5952 x 3992
Other resolutions 5952 x 3968 (JPEG, 24MP), 4256 x 2932 (12MP), 2976 x 1984 (6MP)
Image ratio w:h 3:2
Effective pixels 24 megapixels
Sensor size Full frame (35.8 x 23.9 mm)
Sensor type CMOS
Processor Maestro II
Color space sRGB
Color filter array Primary color filter
Image
ISO Auto, 100-50000
White balance presets 8
Custom white balance Yes
Image stabilization No
Uncompressed format RAW
File format
  • JPEG
  • Raw (DNG)
Optics & Focus
Autofocus
  • Touch
  • Live View
Manual focus Yes
Lens mount Leica M
Focal length multiplier 1×
Screen / viewfinder
Articulated LCD Fixed
Screen size 3″
Screen dots 1,036,800
Touch screen Yes
Screen type TFT LCD
Live view Yes
Viewfinder type Optical (rangefinder)
Viewfinder coverage 100%
Viewfinder magnification 0.73×
Photography features
Minimum shutter speed 8 sec
Maximum shutter speed 1/4000 sec
Exposure modes
  • Program
  • Aperture priority
  • Shutter priority
  • Manual
Built-in flash No
External flash Yes
Flash X sync speed 1/180 sec
Drive modes
  • Single
  • Continuous
  • Interval
  • Exposure bracketing
  • Self-timer
Continuous drive 5.0 fps
Self-timer Yes (2 or 12 secs)
Metering modes
  • Multi
  • Center-weighted
  • Spot
Exposure compensation ±3 (at 1/3 EV steps)
AE Bracketing ±3 (3, 5 frames at 1/3 EV, 2/3 EV, 1 EV, 2 EV steps)
Videography features
Microphone None
Speaker None
Storage
Storage types SD/SDHC/SDXC
Connectivity
HDMI No
Microphone port No
Headphone port No
Wireless Built-In
Remote control Yes (via cable trigger)
Physical
Battery Battery Pack
Battery description BP-SCL5 lithium-ion battery & charger
Battery Life (CIPA) 210
Weight (inc. batteries) 660 g (1.46 lb / 23.28 oz)
Dimensions 139 x 39 x 80 mm (5.47 x 1.54 x 3.15″)
Other features
Orientation sensor Yes
Timelapse recording Yes
GPS Optional
GPS notes via optional Visoflex EVF

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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NVIDIA researchers develop AI that removes noise from images with incredible accuracy

10 Jul

A team of NVIDIA researchers, in partnership with researchers from Aalto University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has shared details of a new artificial intelligence (AI) program that can remove grain from images with such accuracy that it’s almost scary.

‘Using NVIDIA Tesla P100 GPUs with the cuDNN-accelerated TensorFlow deep learning framework, the team trained [its] system on 50,000 images in the ImageNet validation set,’ says NVIDIA in its announcement blog post.

What’s incredible about this particular AI is its ability to know what a clean image looks like without ever actually seeing a noise-free image. Rather than training the deep-learning network by giving it a noisy image and a clean image to learn how to make up the difference, NVIDIA’s AI is trained using two images with different noise patterns.

‘It is possible to learn to restore signals without ever observing clean ones, at performance sometimes exceeding training using clean exemplars,’ say the researchers in a paper published on the findings. The paper goes so far as to say ‘[The neural network] is on par with state-of-the-art methods that make use of clean examples — using precisely the same training methodology, and often without appreciable drawbacks in training time or performance.’

In addition to being used on photographs, researchers note the AI will also be beneficial in scientific and medical fields. In particular, the researchers detail how magnetic imaging resonance (MRI) scans — which are very susceptible to noise — could be dramatically improved using the program, leading to improved diagnoses.

The team behind the AI will present their work at the International Conference on Machine Learning on July 12, 2018.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Houston neighborhood removes photography ban after sidewalk compromise

23 Dec
Historic Broadacres neighborhood of Houston, Texas. Photo by Ed Uthman, used under CC 3.0 license.

Broadacres, a wealthy Houston neighborhood, has reversed its ban on photography following a previous attempt to prevent photographers from holding photo shoots in the area. The issue, according to the Broadacres Homeowners Association (BHA), was that commercial photographers were blocking public sidewalks. “It’s the abusive commercial photographers that have ruined it for everyone,” BHA president Cece Fowler said in a statement to the Houston Chronicle.

The neighborhood has attracted an increasing number of photographers who use it as a picturesque backdrop for wedding photos and more. This has resulted in 50 or more photo shoots every week, according to residents, which at times are said to include large props and groups. Fowler claims that some of these shoots have even caused damage, such as when a Jeep was reportedly driven onto the neighborhood’s esplanade.

Some of these shoots have even caused damage, such as when a Jeep was reportedly driven onto the neighborhood’s esplanade

Frustrated by this, Broadacres put up signs that read, “Welcome to Broadacres; No Photo Shoots.” That resulted in quick backlash on social media, however, and the signs have since been removed. Photography is again permitted in the neighborhood, but with one exception: photo shoots can’t take place on the sidewalks due to city ordinances. Residents have been advised to call the city’s 311 line if such obstructions appear in the future.

According to the Chronicle, Houston Public Works public information officer Alanna Reed said, “We hope the community will be respectful of the neighborhood. Remember the Golden Rule — would you want somebody coming into your neighborhood doing the same thing?”

Via: Fstoppers

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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